Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-10-Speech-4-013"
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"en.20030410.1.4-013"2
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"Madam President, I would like to express a word of thanks to the Commissioner. It is very good to simplify the legislation, from five pieces of legislation to just one. But the Commissioner has also said that this is good for the Internal Market. This is unfortunately not so, because the Internal Market has to contend with very different things. Germany, Italy and a number of other countries have banned phosphates in detergents. In some other countries, such as my own, there is a voluntary ban. In other countries again, in particular the Scandinavian countries, the phosphates are eventually removed in the waste water purification system. In Southern Europe, and unfortunately in Eastern Europe as well, phosphates are permitted. You cannot therefore say that this is good for the Internal Market.
All the groups have however reached a compromise on eight points and this is one of them. I am very happy about it. We say to the Commission that they must take another good look at the scientific evidence which shows that phosphates do indeed cause a problem, not just in the classical detergents. There are after all sufficient alternatives to them. This was the big problem of 30 years ago, that all those detergents contained far too many phosphates so that soap found its way into the rivers everywhere, causing foam and green algae. That problem has been overcome. Now however we have tablets for the dishwasher, which did not exist 30 years ago and which still contain very many phosphates, even in those countries that have now banned phosphates. This is why I have associated myself with the compromise. Take another good look and give the industry three years to come up with alternatives. It really can be done. It proved possible for the ordinary detergents, so it must also be possible for these dishwasher tablets.
Then there is another problem. It is utterly ridiculous that dangerous substances, carcinogenic substances, are permitted in detergents! I am glad that the majority of this Parliament will very probably shortly be declaring itself in favour of them no longer being allowed in ordinary, everyday consumer products that everyone uses. Of course we are running ahead of the legislation on chemistry that is still to come, but it is not our fault that the Commission has waited so long to table this legislation. Indeed, we still do not have it and we are hoping across the whole Parliament, in all the political parties, that the Commission really will table this new legislation before the summer.
Finally, on the subject of odours. Substances that cause allergies, not in everyone, but in certain people who cannot resist them, simply have no place in detergents. Okay, that is not what we have decided. What we have decided is that the detergent manufacturers must state very clearly that these substances are present. This gives people the choice of using them or not and will probably in any event lead to the big detergent manufacturers not putting them in any more."@en1
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